


Don't Kill the Love Song

by idola



Category: Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu | The Legend of the Legendary Heroes
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Succubi & Incubi, Denyuuden AU Week 2020, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24779935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idola/pseuds/idola
Summary: Luke's mentor told him to try materializing in the human world. But one needed a strong connection with humans to do that.What better way to do that than to sweet talk his way into a musclehead's heart?
Relationships: Claugh Klom/Luke Stokkart
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Don't Kill the Love Song

**Author's Note:**

> day 4 - fantasy

Succubi have always appeared in man’s dreams.

They earned their fill from human emotions rather than physical sustenance, and rarely even gathered enough power to materialize in the human world, where it was even easier to wreak havoc.

Most succubi chose to gather power through eroticism. Seduction. They weren’t beautiful by principle, contrary to what man believed; many were quite average. But sex dreams were a low hanging fruit. They were easy to initiate in sleeping humans, and those dreams tended to taste a little sweeter than nightmares. It was easy to suck a man’s life out through sex when he was so eager in his dreams.

So even though they _could_ make humans dream just about anything, both succubi and incubi usually stuck to the basics: sex. (There was a difference between the two, though minor: succubi had an affinity for entering men’s dreams, while incubi had a higher affinity for women.)

Frankly, Luke was a bit tired of that. He was tired of mindless sex. As sweet as sexual dreams tasted, he couldn’t satisfy himself on the same taste forever, and he sure couldn’t be entertained with it.

Besides, succubi who stuck with basic sex dreams very rarely materialized. They just didn’t generate enough emotion for it.

Materialization wasn’t the goal of every succubus. Many enjoyed living and dying as creatures completely unknown to humans. But there were things one could only find in the human world. Hell wasn’t an inviting place, and Luke wanted to read human books and try human food. Both of those were a bit difficult when his connection to the mortal world was a mere thread.

Honestly, Luke hadn’t come to the conclusion to try to materialize himself. Just yesterday, his mentor suggested it. He said that Luke was too promising to stay a plain succubus. That he was too bright for Hell.

“You’re tired of this place,” Miller had said. “Why don’t you try expanding your horizons?”

Luke didn’t necessarily agree, but he figured he’d give it a try for Miller’s sake if anything.

Luke closed his eyes. He’d never seen the real human world before since his connection to it had always been fairly weak. He just didn’t care, after all. He had been content to see it through dreams alone.

He searched through the landscape of dream fragments in his closed eyes. They were the dreams of humans near his location in the other world. Their two worlds existed in an overlay, not separately. With the right connection, it was as easy to walk up from Hell as it was to walk up a short flight of stairs.

It didn’t really matter who he picked. So he just picked the closest dream and jumped through.

The first thing he heard was something breaking. Then the sharp sound of a hand slapping a child.

Luke blinked. A nightmare, then. He’d seen these before. He didn’t know how much was based on truth or how much was dream-garbled. But through similarities between dreams, between nightmares, he was able to form a picture of what the human world must be like.

This particular dream had some differences from that picture. For one, the room that they were in now - a small kitchen - was a mess. The sink was overflowing with dishes. He could smell rotten food. There was trash everywhere.

And, of course, there was a woman screaming at her child.

“Why haven’t you cleaned up? Why’s it such a mess in here!?”

The kid just shook his head. Then he was kicked down.

Luke grimaced. Poor thing. Unfortunately, since he was watching from his bystander’s lenses, he couldn’t be sure if this dream was the mother’s or the child’s. It would be difficult to decipher the taste he’d gain from it from any given intervention.

If he separated them, it might taste bad if it was the mother’s, and good if it was the child’s. If he cleaned, the dreamer could interpret it as the other party cleaning or as themself cleaning. The result was a toss-up.

Still, no matter whose dream it was, even if the child had long since grown up and wasn’t nearly as powerless as he was here, he felt that he ought to intervene.

He crouched down and touched a crumpled piece of paper on the floor. It disappeared. He did the same to the rest of the trash, then ran a finger down the pile of dishes, then motioned for them to reappear clean on the counter.

“M-mom!” The child gasped. “I, I did it! I did clean, see?”

The mother stood too-quickly and lost her balance for a moment. She looked around. “You didn’t even put the dishes away!”

She was still angry, sure, but at least the room didn’t smell like rotting vegetables anymore. When Luke inhaled, he felt energy enter him from the real change he had made on a human’s dreaming mind. It was sweet in a vague sort of way.

This was most likely the child’s dream, then.

Luke watched as the child put the dishes away. He had to climb up on the counter for it, but the mother didn’t seem to care. She was still angry. Silent, but angry.

When the child put the final dishes away, Luke patted his head before he could turn around to see his angry mother. “Thank you,” he said. His words filtered through the child’s brain came out sounding like the mother. “You did well.”

Then he pressed his hand down a little more forcefully to end the dream.

Luke’s mind went blank, so he opened his eyes. The bittersweet taste of a dream that certainly could have gone worse swept through him.

He smiled.

The vast majority of his dream eating went just like that. He went from person to person, never forming any real connection to the dreamers, no matter what he did. But that wasn’t conductive to materializing at all.

Succubi had a bigger impact the more they appeared to the same person. With familiarity came great power, after all.

So he visited that child the following night, too.

The kid was pretty unlucky. Because he was having a pretty similar dream again. The house was a mess, and the cast was the same: a child and his mother.

The mother was groaning on the couch. She looked… off. Like she was sick.

“Can I get you anything?” The child asked quietly.

“You’re special,” the mother slurred. “Spec… speciaaalll…”

The child bit his lip.

This wouldn’t do, would it? This wasn’t a suitable environment for a child at all. Luke touched the boy’s head, then glanced at the door. He blinked, and the scenery changed. Such was a demon’s power over a human’s dreams. Now they were in a field of dead grass.

Well, that wasn’t strictly correct. From the child’s point of view, it would look like he was alone in a dead field. It was hot and dry. A drought had probably caused the grass to die. And Luke could feel the sour taste of unease.

“…You’re worried about her, aren’t you?” Luke asked.

This time, his voice reached the child. But he didn’t seem to realize that it came from outside his own mind. He curled up into a little ball for a moment, then shook his head, apparently thinking better of it. So he stood. “Better make sure she’s okay.”

Luke urged the dream to end before the boy made it home. He didn’t think it was worth it to allow it to continue.

\---

To Luke’s surprise, the dreamer wasn’t actually a child. He knew because the redhead dreamed of himself as an adult, albeit rarely. Those dreams were far more peaceful than the dreams that reflected his youth. He got into stupid fights with people around his age and laughed about stupid things once they made up. Luke also learned through them that his name was Claugh.

Claugh, Claugh, Claugh. How odd to finally have a name to connect to the person he’d already become so familiar with!

It was a relief to see that Claugh was doing better now. But it didn’t change the fact that most of Claugh’s dreams brought the past back to the front of his mind.

Succubi did have ages, and in fact Luke’s age was about the same as adult Claugh’s, but they tended to morph into whatever was most convenient to the dreamer. So when he finally gathered enough power in Claugh’s mind to materialize, he did so in a dream of his childhood.

Claugh’s eyes widened at the sight of him. “Who’re you?”

“My name is Luke. And you?”

“Do you live here?” Claugh asked. “How come I’ve never seen you?”

Tsk, tsk. Such bad manners. “That’s not very nice. Shouldn’t you tell me your name? I told you mine.”

“Aaauuughhh!!”

Luke laughed. An honest laugh. When was the last time something felt so funny? Had anything _ever_ been that funny?

\---

Luke and Claugh saw each other nightly. Not physically, but in the world of Claugh’s dreams. In his childhood. They joked around like old friends. They joked around like Luke had always been there. The dreams got sweeter and sweeter as time went on. As Luke’s connection with Claugh deepened.

A few months later, he realized something. It was deep enough for him to appear in the human world. He could jump from Claugh’s dream to his room and watch as he slept… then watch as he woke up.

It had been like that for a long time. In fact, he probably could have forced himself out of Hell and into the human world after their first night laughing and playing tag together as children. It was a testament to how alone Claugh had been back then. Just one child talking to him and playing with him inside his dream was enough to give him the power to allow a demon to jump worlds.

It was sweet. Luke couldn’t see it as anything but sweet.

The fun thing about Claugh was that despite the amount of power he’d placed in Luke’s hands, despite the difference that Luke could feel in his impact on earth, Claugh always pretended to hate him, or be a total stranger, despite the smile that always fought his forced frown.

“…It’s about time, isn’t it?” Luke said to himself with a smile.

\---

Claugh blinked awake.

He was having a lot of weird dreams lately. The kind of dream that stayed in his head throughout the day instead of leaving the second he got out of bed. See, there was this kid. Not younger or anything. He was a kid while Claugh was a kid, and instead of him just listening to his mom scream all the time, they always went out and did the kind of dumb shit kids did. The things he never got to do.

It was all fun and games, but like, kind of weird? Because he was twenty-five years old, and all his dreams were about some guy. Some kid. That was weird, right?

He sat up. Then he blinked again.

“…Uh, yeah, I’m going back to sleep.” Claugh lay right back down and covered his head with his blankets. 

“How mean! You’re just as rude in person.”

Claugh squeezed his eyes shut. “I said I was sleeping!”

He felt his face heat up under the blanket. This was weird, right? Like, even weirder than dreaming about a guy all the time. That was regular weird. This was downright freaky.

Because this wasn’t a dream. This was reality. He knew because the feeling of his hot breath bouncing back at him from the blanket he was hiding under was way too real, and so was the guy sitting on his bed like nothing was wrong.

This was his house. He’d broken in! And how the fuck was some kid he always dreamed about suddenly here as an adult!?

It was freaky as hell.

“…Well, I’ll make breakfast while you adjust, then,” Luke said. He’d told Claugh his name in his dreams. “What would you like, Claugh?”

And Claugh had told him his name in his dreams. Rookie move! “You’re not real,” Claugh mumbled. “You’re not real so you can’t make me sausage.”

“Watch me.”

Claugh didn’t. He stayed firmly hidden under his hot blanket willing himself to go back to sleep. But soon the smell of sausage wafted in, and his stomach growled, so he sat up.

He was probably supposed to complain about how a complete and total stranger who he’d never seen before in his life was in his house acting like he owned the place. But also the food smelled really good and he was hungry.

Food first, details later.

Claugh made the short trip over to his kitchen and sat down at the table. Luke, still for some reason real, was finishing up the sausage. He shot Claugh a bright smile. “Good morning, sleepyhead!”

“Uhh. Don’t call me that.”

Luke just laughed. He served Claugh a big plate of sausage, then sat his own smaller portion down.

Claugh took a bite. It was… pretty damn good. Perfectly cooked. But it was just sausage! It was easy to make. He cleared the plate in seconds.

“Did I not make enough?” Luke asked. He hadn’t even started his own. He just watched Claugh eat.

“Get out of my house.”

“Haha. When do you leave for work?” Luke asked. He finally took a bite of the food himself, then nodded in satisfaction at his own cooking.

“When I’m supposed to be there.”

“And how long does it take you to get there?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Doesn’t that mean that you’re twenty minutes late every day?”

Claugh shrugged. “Who cares. Anyway, get out of my house.”

“You’re so mean. After I went through the effort to cook for you, too!” Luke said. Having finished his small portion, he stood up and gathered their dishes. Then he began to clean them.

“Why are you even here?” Claugh asked.

“Where else would I be?”

“Uhh… I dunno. Do you not like, have your own house?”

“No.”

“And how’d you even get in here?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Why were you in my dreams?” Claugh asked. But he knew he made a horrible mistake the second it was out of his mouth.

Luke turned back around to face him and held his hands against his own cheeks, then batted his eyelashes like he thought he was the cutest thing in the whole world. “Wow, Claugh, did you just say that I’m the man of your dreams?”

“N-no! Fuck you!”

And that marked the start of Claugh’s life with Luke.

Every day he was woken by either his alarm or Luke telling him that he slept through his alarm. Every day Luke cooked him breakfast and dinner and cleaned the house.

It took a whole ass week for Claugh to finally get an answer from Luke about who he was and why he was here.

“I’m not actually a human,” Luke said.

“Yeah, not surprised,” Claugh said and nodded to himself. “You’re a demon, right?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Sounds about right.”

“I’m a succubus.”

Claugh spit out his protein shake. (Yes, it was courtesy of Luke. So what.)

“Aww, I just cleaned that table,” Luke said and fake pouted. “Is it really so shocking? I’m the man of your dreams, right?”

“G-give that a rest!” Claugh said. “Don’t succubi, uh… I mean, aren’t they supposed to be hot girls?”

Luke shrugged. “Not really. We’re just dream eaters who are better at finding men’s dreams than women’s.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Does that mean you were, uh… eating those dreams? Were you changing them, too? Like making me dream about different things?”

“Sort of,” Luke said. “But don’t worry about it.”

Don’t worry about it…? “It’s obviously weird if you were making me dream about you!”

“Aw, come on. You’ve dreamed about me without me forcing it before, too.”

Claugh felt his face heat up. If he could evict Luke, he would. Really! But it was impossible. How the hell was he supposed to evict a demon?

“By the way, nobody but you can see me,” Luke said. “My connection to the human world isn’t strong enough yet.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m using my connection to you to exist in this world,” Luke said. He smiled kindly as he explained. He always had that smile on his face. It was… calming, in a way? But not in a gay way. Just a regular way. “The closer we get, the more I can exist here. That’s why I had to meet you in your dreams before meeting you here.”

“So I can make you get a job instead of freeloading if we get closer?”

“I cook and clean. Is that really freeloading?”

Claugh shrugged. “So, uh… why’d you pick me, anyway? I’m not special.”

Luke tilted his head as if he was truly confused to hear that Claugh thought that. “I think you’re plenty special.”

“No, I mean… What good are you even seeing in me? What merit is there in you coming here and living with me and stuff?”

“I can only think of the merits,” Luke said. He was so sincere saying it that listening to him filled Claugh with second-hand embarrassment from head to toe.

That was how Luke was. That was how he always was.

For some reason, he seemed perfectly content living his life with only Claugh as his link to the outside world. He entertained himself by cooking and cleaning and reading Claugh’s books while he was gone.

Then he started to make requests. “Claugh, can we go to the grocery store together?”

“Uhh… what do you need?”

Luke shrugged. “I’ve never been to one before. I just thought it’d be fun.”

So they went to the grocery store. Luke picked out all sorts of fresh vegetables and meats and spices to try his hand with. The bill was way more than Claugh usually spent on food.

Claugh bit back a sigh and handed the cash over.

“…You owe me money,” Claugh said.

“Thank youuu.”

“Get a job.”

“I will once other people can see me!” Luke said. He looped his arm through Claugh’s, ignoring the cashier entirely. But the cashier ignored him too. Because he couldn’t see a thing. He was trying his damned best to focus on counting Claugh’s change despite listening to him talk to himself. “But I need to get closer to you for that.”

“……” 

Claugh took his change from the cashier, then grabbed all his groceries. He didn’t respond to Luke’s comment on the weather. Instead, he took a turn into an alley. Away from others.

It was only once he was completely out of everyone else’s sight that he plopped the groceries down on the dirty ground and leaned against a building. “Hey. You.”

“Me?” Luke asked. “I have a name.”

“Yeah, you. Listen. I know you wanna get closer for your own sake and all, but like… Will that even make other people see you?”

“Of course it would.”

“You’re saying that if I specifically become closer to you, you’re gonna stop being invisible to everyone. That doesn’t make any sense,” Claugh said.

“…Alright, alright. I see what you mean,” Luke said and sighed. “There’s a bit more to it than that. We’re not really… ‘dream’ eaters, so to speak. We’re more… well, we become stronger the more we impact people.”

“Huh… so what’s that mean?”

“If I were to manipulate your dreams into something so terrifying that you were scarred for life, I’d gain a stronger tie to the world because I’d have a fairly strong effect on someone in it. But now that I’m here, I can influence you in other ways, too. Like asking you to go to the grocery store.”

“That’s kinda…”

…Harmless.

Didn’t demons normally make people into murderers or something? Claugh looked into Luke’s eyes. Troubled, concerned. He wasn’t the kind of person that would make Claugh kill someone. If anything, he’d probably beg him not to.

Yeah… yeah.

Demon or not, Luke was an okay guy. He was safe to be around. Except for when he was a brat.

Which was all the time.

Constantly.

“……”

Someone was approaching. Not from the main road. From one alley to the next. Claugh pushed himself off the wall, then moved past Luke, in front of him, so he could see the guy a little more clearly.

He was walking with purpose. That was what set off an alarm in Claugh’s mind. Now that he was getting a good look at him, there was a knife in his hands, too.

“What do you want?” Claugh asked. It was just a punk. One you could find anywhere in town. Armed robbery so he could buy some drugs. If his mom had lived in the city instead of the countryside, she definitely would’ve done this shit… 

But that didn’t mean Claugh had to go easy on someone who was after his life. He’d just take the knife and scare him a little… 

“Wow,” Luke breathed from behind him. “I’ve never seen a real life murderer before.”

“Who says he’s killed anyone yet?” Claugh asked. “He’s just a punk.”

“What, are you going to wait until he does kill someone?” Luke asked. “Are you volunteering? Is that your way of admitting you can’t win?”

…Like hell!

The kid rushed towards Claugh with his knife bared. Claugh sidestepped, took the knife, then used his fist to slam his head against the wall as hard as he could. It cracked. His skull cracked.

The punk collapsed.

“…Impressive,” Luke said. He didn’t sound bothered at all by the sight of a body. “I guess you could do it.”

“Hah. Told you so.” Claugh turned around and picked his groceries back up off the ground.

They walked back out the alley from where they’d come in. Back out onto the main street. Then they began to walk home. But… 

“Um, excuse me, sir!” A teenage girl said loudly from behind. Claugh turned around to face her. Luke did, too.

It took a second for Claugh to realize, but she wasn’t talking to him. She was talking to Luke.

“Umm… do you know where I can find this place?” She asked and pushed her phone up to Luke’s face.

Luke furrowed his eyebrows as he stared at the address. “Er… I’m sorry, I’m not from around here. But there’s a map with directions to all the sights to see here in town a block back!”

“Oh, thank you! You’re a lifesaver!”

Luke smiled. Claugh didn’t. He just stared. Dumbfounded.

\---

Succubi didn’t have a moral code. Some individuals did, but as a society, it was a free-for-all. Maybe that was why Luke didn’t feel particularly guilty about encouraging Claugh to kill a man. Or maybe it was because he could feel that it had been a human who would cause Claugh nothing but pain.

But he wasn’t sure. He never really knew what he was feeling.

The study of theology was conflicted. Did demons have emotions? Did they experience jealousy? If they did, that mean that they experienced love? What about remorse?

Anyhow, Claugh didn’t really mind either. Not enough to bother talking about it. Sure, it probably left a bad taste in his mouth, but hey. At least Luke was here to cook him something nice to get that bad taste out now.

He’d gotten to know Claugh because Miller said to, but now that they were roommates, now that Claugh helped him fake a resume so he could get a job at a daycare and pay some bills instead of just freeloading, now that they sometimes fell asleep on each other when they watched movies, now that they woke up in the same room… 

Did it matter if they were demon and human? Did it matter if he brought Claugh misfortune time and time again? Or did it matter more that every day was bright and happy?

Luke was a succubi, Claugh was a human, and they were roommates. What was the worst thing that could happen?

**Author's Note:**

> and they were ROOMMATES


End file.
